Facebook Users Cry 'Censorship' After Being Told Which Russian Troll Pages They Liked (gizmodo.com) 487
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: As the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference reaches a fever pitch, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who followed pages created by Russian trolls that those pages have been removed. And some of the affected users did not like this. A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias. Others took on a more conspiratorial tone, claiming that Facebook failed to reveal which pages were removed (despite the alert containing a link listing the pages in question). Facebook first released the information in December, creating a help page that showed users if they liked or followed pages and accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, Russia's notorious troll farm, but today's alert seems to have inspired newfound alarm. The fact that Facebook explicitly stated which pages were deleted seems to have done little to reduce the anger over the allegedly clandestine silencing.
why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
from the article:
> Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,”
yes, your feelings affect the facts
except they don't
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
How many of the notified/complaining users are in fact MORE Russian misinformation accounts that have not yet been discovered... and the outcry is simply a ploy to destabilize Facebook?
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Funny)
...and the outcry is simply a ploy to destabilize Facebook?
OK...
looking for a downside...
still looking...
I give up.
Could fake news turn out to be good news?
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Could fake news turn out to be good news?
I could wish Facebook would crash and burn and somehow the whole model would go with it, but it is not going to happen.
We almost need some kind of education program to identify legitimate sources of news. Using Google to search for "Fact Check title" often works, though care is required there as with anything else.
We as a country failed pretty much every way we could fail to take actions to prevent this crap from happening again. Trump just refused to enforce any sanctions beyond the tiny bit he couldn't avoid, yet again, and this was the final deadline.
Ultimately the fact that the propaganda worked is because a great many people in our country are conditioned to listen to propaganda. The Herman Goering applies, and I fear it probably always will. He said,
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
In the last election we were given Mexicans, Muslims, Islam, EPA policies to protect the environment, Strong Women, Fake Scandals, Gay People (restroom thing/marriage), Others taking Jobs, etc, etc as the "enemies" that were "attacking, taking jobs, etc."
Trump, with help, assembled a collection of enemies that generally weren't going to vote for him anyway. He promised to fight those enemies for his chosen people.
It worked. Some of Trump's policies will probably accelerate the economy in the short term, but at the expense of the environment, debt, justice, fairness, freedom, etc. For Trump and the Republicans. It doesn't matter. They are achieving their goals and their donors are making money hand over fist. Mission Accomplished.
They may even win in 2020. Remember you don't have to win the next war the same way the last was won. Lies work. You just need to recalibrate. Blame the other side for everything that is wrong and come up with some reasons for it. Accuse them of every fault you have. They don't have to be real. The seth rich crap still pops up everywhere. Keep repeating the lies, lather, rinse repeat. I'd expect help from Russia again, and maybe some other countries with a long term interest in weakening the united states. AI will improve. The ability for a few people to harness ever more sophisticated bots will increase. Telling fake from real news will be more difficult, with the only real hope is to use the more time tested sources. Heck we haven't even prepared for the last battle we had, let alone the battles to fight off foreign cyber manipulation on the scale we shall see in the future.
We have the right to bear arms, but that is useless if your adversary is across an ocean and enough of your populace is clicking on their weaponized misinformation and liking it.
Education programm (Score:5, Interesting)
We almost need some kind of education program to identify legitimate sources of news. Using Google to search for "Fact Check title" often works, though care is required there as with anything else.
Which exactly what is happening in some other countries : France is having a few pilot program of teach media to kids (random example [youtube.com] of a youtuber who's a teacher in real life and has published records of a classroom. Sorry it's in French. And sorry for the unfortunate implication if you translate the title in English, that wasn't intended in French).
The Herman Goering applies, and I fear it probably always will.
His assert about people getting used to (and eventually somewhat believing) a lie repeated enough might apply as well.
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Could fake news turn out to be good news?
When they are not less true than official news, yes. Ostensibly, this is often the case. [alternet.org]
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That's what they want you to think.
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MORE Russian misinformation accounts ... simply a ploy to destabilize Facebook?
Possible, but since cognitive dissonance renders that redundant, Occam's Razor demands we presumptively treat them as genuine (useful) idiots.
And let's remember it is not exclusively those on the right, as seems to be the insinuation, who have been re-posting Russian troll 'news.' More than that, using this to score cheap political points only exacerbates the mischief Putin has been visiting on our various democracies. To fig
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How do we know that *you* are not a Russian created misinformation account, pretending to be anti-Russian so we gain your trust only to later start seeding discussions with pro-Russian posts?
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the "facts" are being distilled, filtered, and represented by a biased source.
You literally have to choose who to believe in every case where you are not present to directly witness events.
Why should anyone believe Facebook when they've been caught red-handed manipulating trending news stories?
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should anyone believe Facebook when they've been caught red-handed manipulating trending news stories?
Because it's easy to not get your news from facebook. Besides this is all major egg on their face.
Unless you believe that there are thousands of small business owners with childlike english and hours of spare time to shit up comments sections all over the internet.
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Well, based on the inability of /. users to spell and use proper grammar (and we're supposedly among the best and the brightest), I have no problem believing that there are thousands of small business owners with childlike English and hours to spare.
As to whether any particular FB user is what he claims to be...well, I don't believe it here, and don't believe it there, either....
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:4, Funny)
As to whether any particular FB user is what he claims to be...well, I don't believe it here, and don't believe it there, either....
OMG!!! Are you telling us that you might not be the Crimson Avenger?!! :o
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... (and we're supposedly among the best and the brightest),
Every clique believes this, with the possible exception of the Coalition of Village Idiots.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Informative)
The real problem is that Facebook is actually an Internet entertainment site and should not be taken literally, or seriously.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:4, Funny)
Take my Facebook. Please.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the real problem though: people say they want to decide for themselves what is true, but in the past when presented with obviously fake stories, these same people did not do the research to actually determine if it's true. Hell, a lot of the time they don't even read the article, just the headline, and just hit "share". This is how this shit spreads - it spreads specifically because the target audience is known for not doing the research to determine whether or not it's true. The people who make money on this stuff know and admit this fact - they know that they have to choose a target audience that will not do the research. And this target audience is pretty broad, it might include children of four-star generals, it might include sons of presidents, it might include presidents themselves, all kinds of people really.
So, if the target audience for fake news and foreign propaganda will not do their own research, and they still don't want to be told whether or not they are reading foreign propaganda aimed at them, then what's the desired outcome? Do they just want to consume foreign propaganda while being willfully ignorant of it? Is it just stubbornness, or do they actually not care if the article they are reading was produced in a foreign intelligence agency and bears no truth in reality, as long it describes something which they feel might be true?
Why should anyone believe Facebook when they've been caught red-handed manipulating trending news stories?
See, but that's what's so great about this kind of thing, when done right. It's not a religion, it doesn't require faith and belief. You can look at the evidence and see where it points. It's like the people who are quick to dismiss anything from Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it" while conveniently forgetting about that giant list of citations at the end of the article. This isn't happening in a vacuum. If they remove a page and they tell you which page you don't have to blindly trust them, you can do your own research on that group to figure out what Facebook knows about them. In theory, anyway.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the real problem though: people say they want to decide for themselves what is true, but in the past when presented with obviously fake stories, these same people did not do the research to actually determine if it's true.
These are people who think that they can establish what's true based on faith and feelings, not research and facts. To them, preponderance of evidence means "what does your gut tell you".
Trying to sway their opinion with mere facts is an exercise in futility. They believe they have the right to choose what the facts are.
I really wish I lived in their world.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone processes information that way. It's a shortcut our brains take to reduce the amount of processing necessary to interpret what's going on in the world. When you're driving, you don't look at every tree you pass in detail, examine the leaves, branches, and trunk, and decide "yup that's a tree, better steer clear of it." That would take way too much time and we wouldn't be able to drive faster than 5 MPH if we processed information that way. Instead, you see something that looks vaguely tree-like out of the corner of your eye, and decide better safe than sorry and immediately classify it as a tree. And when it turns out not to be a tree, but is a kid with a patterned shirt standing next to a telephone poll with a bush behind him who unexpectedly jumps into the street in front of you, you have an accident.
By attributing the problem to "these people" instead of "we", you are excluding yourself as if you're somehow immune to this. Yes, some of us are better at avoiding jumping to conclusions like this, but all of us do it. It's just our brains handle situations that would otherwise require making hundreds or thousands of decisions every second. Pretending you're immune to it just makes yourself blind to when you do it.
Stereotyping and discrimination have the same cause. Rather than take the time to categorize every individual chair we encounter, we develop a mental model of a generic "chair" and the attributes it should possess. Then we assume all chairs we encounter have those attributes. That way we can treat a chair correctly 98% of the time at a much reduced mental workload. The problems caused by the 2% when our mental model is wrong is preferable to the additional workload that would be needed to process the other 98% of chairs. The problem comes about when we take attributes that are true of, say, 70% of a race or gender, and assume they apply to all members of that race or gender. You have to be cognizant of the times when such over-generalization will fail safe, vs fail dangerously.
I know this is a mental shortcut my brain takes, and I still catch myself doing it several times every day. If you somehow think they're above making these mistakes, you're just blissfully ignorant of the times when you do. Just like the people you're criticizing.
Re: why fb users are dumb (Score:3)
+1 IWishIHadModPoints. ... your post, of course, will beg for "but then how do we deal with fake news propaganda attacks?", to which the answer is simple: education, explanation, and constant discussion with those who disagree.
Find out why they disagree. That gives clues to their fears and the roots of their stubbornness. Better education in the long term will help them (and us) to understand the value of real arguments.
And once in a while we may find out that they were right and we were wrong... maybe just
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem comes about when we take attributes that are true of, say, 70% of a race or gender, and assume they apply to all members of that race or gender.
Given that humans learn not just from experience, but also indirectly, stereotypes can hold even if they are 1% accurate. In my country there are hardly any Muslims, but people here have very strong beliefs about what they are like, even when they have never met one. What is even worse, such misconceptions can arise even with consumption of accurate reporting. If the only world news that are consumed are about terrorism and wars, that view will become very distorted.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
This is strawman argumentation. I never said that I never trust my gut feelings based on scant evidence. But sticking to your gut feelings when you are presented with new evidence is a whole different ball game.
To use your own example, it's like if you jumped to the conclusion that something that looked like a wooden chair was a wooden chair. And then, when someone sat on it and it collapsed like rubber, and then sprang back into shape again, you still insisted that it's a wooden chair, and that this is your decision to make.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the real problem though: people say they want to decide for themselves what is true, but in the past when presented with obviously fake stories, these same people did not do the research to actually determine if it's true.
These are people who think that they can establish what's true based on faith and feelings, not research and facts. To them, preponderance of evidence means "what does your gut tell you". Trying to sway their opinion with mere facts is an exercise in futility. They believe they have the right to choose what the facts are.
I really wish I lived in their world.
In addition, there is evidence the more someone is presented with facts counter to their beliefs they tend to become even more firm in their beliefs rather than being swayed or even reconsider what they believe in light of the facts.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes me feel old. It seems like only yesterday that relativism was a sin the right accused the left of.
Re:why fb users are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, when shown, with detailed breakdown and actual facts, that it is fake- they declare the debunker to be part of the conspiracy. See any right wing response to snopes and other fact checker sites.
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stop confusing them with facts, it makes their brains hurt that they like being traitors
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it makes their brains hurt that they like being traitors
That grammar makes my brain hurt.
There's a period there. It doesn't make my brain "hurt that" something, because that doesn't make any sense, it just makes it hurt.
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Sweet dreams are made of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas,
Everybody's looking for something.
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.
Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be, and many people seem to prefer not to think of themselves as having been manipulated by Russian trolls. Or maybe they are just so far down the rabbit hole they can't climb back up yet.
Re:Denial (Score:4, Interesting)
The DNC spent 1.2 BILLLION and lost to some trolls on facebook?
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If we say yes do you get a bonus?
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The "useful idiot" pay scale doesn't give bonuses. Don't ask me how I know.
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I think they mostly lost to their own in-fighting and Trump, but it was so close it wouldn't have taken much to swing it. And as well as the trolls, they were hit with those carefully timed email leaks from Russian hackers.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it was infighting, I think it was complacency and misreading the data.
Clinton's campaign acted all along as if they could leave it to Trump lose the election, and the polls seemed to be bearing that out. However polling figures aren't as reliable as the "margin of error" figures suggest, because that margin only represents random sampling errors. It does not account for systematic sampling errors.
Every poll is adjusted by some kind of likely voter turnout model, and in state after state anomalously high rural turnout knocked those models into a cocked hat. The thing is there were warning signs of this from Clinton's own campaigns in those states, which Clinton chose to ignore because the numbers were telling her what she expected to hear.
That's always a danger when you manage by numbers. Numeric and anecdotal data both have their place, mostly to raise healthy doubts about the other.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
The turnout was as expected. The discrepancy was that people likely to vote for Trump were unlikely to tell pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump [latimes.com] due to public shaming of Trump supporters by the media. That USC/LA Times poll was pretty much the only one to predict a Trump victory. They reached that conclusion when they noticed that Trump supporters reported they were very uncomfortable telling pollsters that they were Trump supporters. They tweaked their model to account for that (that more Trump supporters weren't telling pollsters who they were voting for, than Clinton supporters).
The press broke the #1 rule of reporting news - do it in an unbiased manner so you don't affect the story with your presence. By not only participating in but apparently gleefully encouraging the shaming of Trump supporters, they caused said supporters to disappear from their own polls, creating the "surprise" Trump win in 2016.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
The press broke the #1 rule of reporting news - do it in an unbiased manner so you don't affect the story with your presence
Also, they gave more or les equal time to reporting claims from both sides, even though the ones from Trump's side were about 70% outright lies. so thye spent a good amount of time broadcasting lies for everyone to hear.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Interesting)
Does collusion with a foreign government to influence the election for a quid pro quo of easing sanctions matter to you at all?
Re:Denial (Score:4)
Sounds like you were there and privy to things not even Mueller knows about. I imagine he'd be interested in hearing from you so he can resolve the case sooner.
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Trump has blocked sanctions at every turn. They were passed by the House with only 3 members voting no and passed by the Senate 98-2. Trump missed the first deadline, in October, to apply the sanctions and has now missed the second deadline, as of Monday of this week.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
This was a law that Trump himself signed because Congress had a veto-proof majority. He is in
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I guess if you look at it purely as a contest between two particular advocates, then yes.
But there might have been more going on, such as other advocates for those candidates (and other candidates), possibly even the candidates themselves, voters' opinions, etc.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
There is of course more to it than that. Phrasing it as "some trolls on facebook" makes it sound like a handful of basement dwellers just posting whatever they think will annoy people, when it was actually a deliberate and co-ordinated effort of telling certain groups of people what they wanted to hear.
And of course, just throwing a lot of money at something does not equal results; strategy and effective use of what resources you assign does come into it. And besides that even, Trump didn't actually win the popular vote. The electoral college put him in.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Funny)
No idea what was spent on GOP candidates because Russia does not have to report their expenditures.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it helped that a good amount of the electorate decided they did not want political experience.
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Well, it helped that a good amount of the electorate decided they did not want political experience.
After how well all the other "experienced" presidents have done apparently experience isn't all that important. Stocks are up what, 7,000 since the election? 18,000 to 25,000+? Unemployment is down, number of people on welfare is down, number of illegal aliens sneaking in is down.
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Since Facebook has a rule against being a Russian government troll and misrepresenting yourself as an American, perhaps they should be asking what platform allows that kind of thing and why Reddit is full of batshit conspiracy theories.
I don't know why some people use Facebook when they clearly want 4chan or Gab. Did they even READ the Facebook ToS?!
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This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be...
... and contradicting a fanatic, left or right wing, is censorship.
Re:Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true unfortunately and it's not limited to politics by any means. I was having a discussion yesterday on FB about energy policies and there was a guy arguing for '100 % solar'/renewable approach. I went in explaining to him why this is not feasible and would in fact do a lot of damage to the environment and that we should favor a mix of renewables and nuclear as that's the best combo to go with if we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly and effectively. He then came back with the typical fear mongering arguments about how radiation is scary and so on, and we had a back and forth where I tried to the best of my ability to counter his points with actual facts and figures about energy production, emissions, deaths per kilowatt hour etc etc. He never contested any of my points even, he just threw in the next objection he had in mind. After a few comments of this he finally came back with, and this is a direct quote: "you are entitled to have your opinion but I am afraid this will not affect/change mine. Sorry" In other words: 'I'm free to ignore facts that don't fit with my ideology'.
This is the fundamental issue with the net/social media in its current state. Since it's driven by algorithms that are geared to maximise time on site and engagement, those algorithms do 2 primary things: firstly the surround you with people and content that's in line with yours, because people like reading stuff they agree with, and secondly they drop in the occasional piece of information/news/opinion that's likely to make you angry, because angry people are more engaged and pay more attention, thereby improving the effectiveness of advertising.
People are naturally inclined to be more accepting evidence supporting a claim they already believe in, and the algorithms online have pushed this to overdrive. People on one side of an issue, and people on another side of an issue, all equally convinced that no-one in their right mind could be on the other . This makes conversation, actual, fact-based conversation, almost impossible, and simultaneously makes utilising social media for political/ideological propaganda really easy, because it's build to divide people into groups of likeminded people What the guy was likely doing to me in the energy discussion was throwing talking points at me that he had heard/seen made before by other members of his bubble. He wasn't arguing so much as he was lobbing memes at me, and in the end, when none of those memes worked, he resorted to 'well, that's like just your opinion man.'
The same phenomenon is going in globally with politics. People by and large don't discuss issues and facts, they take different kind of political memes and throw them at each other, with the end result being that the other side only usually gets angry and counters with their own memes. This is super effective in keeping people engaged on the site, it's precisely what the platforms aim to do and it's simultaneously toxic for any actual discussion about facts, because any fact-based arguments have a memetic counter to them.
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Sounds like a classic ``Gish Gallop [wikipedia.org]'' tactic.
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This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be
IMO It's a bit naive to think it was ever otherwise.
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This.
Sanity is knowing the difference between bullshit and wild honey.
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The truth is whatever you prefer it to be
Just like it was already the case with morality:
"I decide what's right and what's wrong, and I do whatever I want as long as I don't harm anyone"
-- most people
Re: Denial (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sad when people think that Brietbart has more truthiness than CNN.
That was the plan all along. Convince people that the people telling the truth 99% of the time were liars, and that the ones bullshitting them were actually the only source of reliable information. That's why conspiracy theories are so popular now.
Stipulation is not truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
When people say "I want the truth," what they really mean is "I want evidence that justifies my forgone conclusions."
They want the beliefs they already have to turn out to be true. So they will like anything that reinforces it.
They might reject this and say they want to learn what the real truth is. But the moment you start giving them evidence that they don't like, they pull out every irrational trick in the book to reject it. And they insist that they aren't doing this.
It really is quite amazing how good people are at this.
(of course, there are SOME people who have an honest interest in truth and the will to overcome their biases in the pursuit of it, but they are so rare as to be statistically insignificant)
Re:Stipulation is not truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called confirmation bias and it's very prevalent in political arguments. People don't react well when their bias get's challenged and they are emotionally invested in being "right" about the issues so they react badly, yell at the sky, protest and riot.... RESIST!
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No. I was in the military in 1974, sitting in my barracks in England, listening to radio reports of the happenings in Washington D.C.
I did not want to hear that my President, Richard Nixon, was resigning in disgrace, but it was so. And I did not want to hear that he had, at least, suborned perjury and obstruction of justice, but it seemed to be so. And I was hurt.
But I did not ignore the facts, nor did I reject them.
And that has guided my political beliefs since. Sadly, truth is challenged at every turn,
Allowed to decide... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias.
One summer in college, I was fortunate enough to take a Chemistry course taught by Bassam Shakhashiri [wikipedia.org].
One of the things he would do is ask, "How many people think it's A?" and a bunch of people would raise their hands.
Then he would ask, "How many people think it's B?" and a bunch of other people would raise their hands.
He would then say, "Science is not a democracy. The answer is ____."
Truth is not a democracy either.
Re:Allowed to decide... (Score:5, Interesting)
But selectively discussing truth is what is going on here. The news reports what's demonstrably true, but they only present the facts which support their desired narrative and ignore the things that do not.
I learned this 25 years ago, watching the local TV station's (which I worked for) news coverage of a Senatorial campaign. The incumbent was sure to win, he'd won many senate races before, but that wasn't the desired narrative. We where also subject to "equal time" rules at the time. So how do you cover this when you don't like the incumbent? Easy.. They granted two 3 min segments, one to each campaign's rally in town. For the challenger, you got 3 min of him speaking about how his policies where better than the incumbent's with background video of the cheering crowd. For the incumbent's rally we got a discussion of the protestors who showed up with background video of their protest outside the rally. Both segments where 100% true, but the implication of the coverage was the incumbent was loosing. He won the election by nearly 30% margins the following week.
So being True isn't enough... You need the Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth... Or you are subject to being mistaken.
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Horseshit false equivalence. If you think that mainstream US media peddles lies nearly as often as Russian propaganda mills, even if you include the news channel that sued for its right to lie to viewers and won, you've lost your grip on reality. Just as the Russians want, I might add.
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"Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Enjoy the local gov funded propaganda messaging.
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That doesn't allow domestic propaganda. This does:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/... [foreignpolicy.com]
Oddly enough, hardly a peep was made about the news then or since.
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Planted fake stories globally will stay within another nations domestic print media and magazines?
With less of the Smith–Mundt Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]–Mundt_Act its all a global effort.
No way to make them happy in this (Score:5, Insightful)
"Like" button (Score:5, Insightful)
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The pages in question (Score:5, Informative)
come from an outfit called "The Internet Research Agency" [fb.com], which you can read about on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
TL;DR: The Internet Research Agency is a St. Petersburg based company which has among its customers the government of Russia. The company specializes in astroturfing -- not just in the US but in Russia as well. In Eastern Europe they're focused on Ukraine but in the US they post on both sides of issues (e.g. posting as socially conservative groups or as radical LGBT groups) in order to stir up division, e.g. posing as American Muslims or gays or as American evangelical Christians.
Sigh (Score:3)
An old co-worker had a habit of posting obviously fake right wing news articles, so-and-so arrested for treason, Obama caught admitting to X, etc.
When I saw it I would usually post a quick comment pointing out it was fake (often providing counter-evidence) and he'd reply "opps" and move on to most the next obvious piece of BS.
Eventually I prodded a bit too much during the health care bill and he unfriended me.
I still have no idea if he actually believed some of that fake news or if he simply didn't care.
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It's weird, for some people, the outrage is completely transitory. How many people saw fake news about, say, "pizzagate", felt a flash of outrage, liked or reposted or whatever, and then just moved on to the next piece of propaganda calculated to anger them?
In a certain way, I admire the jerk who got his guns and went to liberate the kids in the pizza joint. I mean, if you honestly believe that this place is kee
please give us elites (Score:5, Insightful)
Uninformed crowds voting for what they believe sounds correct or newsworthy (or worse, what's just trendy or fun, no intellectual effort required) leads to very damaging scams and fake news flying around like a virus on an unvaccinated population.
Smart governments know that information is not just something that can be left to figure itself out at the whim of the crowd.
Re:please give us elites (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
Sounds an awful lot like the religious authoritarianism that on balance we've finally gotten over after a few short millennia. Where's the limiting principle in your worldview to prevent reinstituting that as well?
Ugh, no elites.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that there is no penalty for producing information that is outright fabrication, no punishment for acting against the interests of the greater good of an information based society. You can lie and fabricate for your own selfish ends as much as you like, and people don't realize that.
In a way, the Internet is like an early capitalist economy, where any actor can engage in predatory monopolistic behavior without any fear or repercussions. In a truly free market, you should act as destructively as possible towards ecenomic rivals before they catch on and do the same to you. In an open Internet, why not just produce lies and propaganda to support your POV or political ends? If you don't do it, your rivals will.
An open and free Internet is an achievable goal. It just requires a few rules that can be enforced fairly for all parties involved. Eventually there will be some sort of Internet laws created that are agreed on by a number of countries, and all the rest of the world will be forced to play by them or kicked off the Internet. It will be something like:
1) No attacking underlying infrastructure
2) No censoring other parties
3) No spreading false or misleading information.
It won't likely be soon though, so expect more bullshit like this until it happens...
DON'T get news from ONE source! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we are (Score:3)
Collectively, we are that stupid.
I've since censored ALL of FaceBook (Score:3)
People hate being called idiots! (Score:3)
People hate being called idiots and thats exactly what Facebook just did:
"You are an idiot because you believed into fabricated accounts distributing fabricated stories."
Now smart people could just shut up and swallow their hurt pride. But we are obviously not talking about smart people...
It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Thank you Facebook for being a fool spotlight.
No 1st Amendment rights (Score:3)
People simply don't understand one of the most basic properties of websites. They are not government controlled entities and have absolutely no rules regarding your free speech. They are free to censor, modify and repackage anything put on their site. Most of the legalese you blindly agree to signs away most of your rights to even content you create.
The most important property of a website to remember is: You are a guest in someone else's domain.
As a guest, you have no say, no rights, no recourse but to leave the site. You're free to create you own site to write all about your horrific experience with another site, but think again if you think you have any rights as a guest. The only right you have is to leave.
And these days, ugh, even that's a little questionable, some of these sites out there retain everything they know about you even if you tell them you're done and want to remove your account entirely.
Faceboot (Score:5, Funny)
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
--George Orwell, 1984
Curiously, Facebook, Inc. owns the domain Faceboot.com, and it redirects to Facebook.com.
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It'd be sad if it wasn't so predictable.
Incorrect. It is still sad.
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And still predictable.
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No, I did.
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ps. where is the next social media platform... I want it bad.
Nice try ivan.
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I think back then we had motivation to beat them. Today our independently wealthy citizens who own the republican party want to JOIN them, or at least set up a corrupt system like theirs.
Re:What made the USA great (Score:5, Informative)
Oh puh-lease. These accounts and ads got canned because they violated Facebook's TOS, which forbid pretending impersonating other people or deceptively misidentifying yourself.
The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
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The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
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Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
here [facebook.com], to wit:
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits. They didn't find any of this while it was going on, but later were able to identify the fake accounts.
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Movie reviews? Tech news about not showing ads? Crypto? Linking to sites about whistleblowers? Movie reviews? Time to support another nations blasphemy laws globally?
Freedom of speech and the freedom to petition your government on a site many parts of the US gov use a gateway to interacting with the US gov locally?
Once a site starts to accept the US gov as part of their service, that TOS should offer the full protections of the USA.
Would a comment about the US g
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What other topics can get "canned"?
I just got through saying they got canned for misrepresenting their identity, not the topic.
Ok, Comrade! (Score:5, Funny)
What made the USA great was the ability to read, publish, self publish, review publications, talk about books and news. Now social media wants to stop all that discussion in the USA.
I guess since we can't do it on facebook, that means it's prohibited everywhere! Oh wait, no, nobody is stopping you from doing any of those things! It's almost like there are some Terms of Service that you have to abide by for certain platform! If there were some way people could put content on the internet without such things. Too bad nobody will ever figure out how to make a website or connect a server to the internet. Clearly facebook was the last site that ever figured that one out!
Your argument holds less water than aerogel.
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Republicans whine and cry when you point out that Moscow Donald has been caught red handed committing treason, and that the republican party is committing obstruction of justice to cover for Russia's attack on America.
Source? Because from what I read only the DNC and Hillary herself are working with the Russians https://www.wsj.com/articles/d... [wsj.com]
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Well, the Watergate investigation took a little over 2 years. The president has a lot of means to obstruct an investigation. Putting together a watertight case against a sitting president takes time. It might go faster if a certain person were to actually be honest with the investigators.
Re:Re; Democrats are a known TRAITORS (Score:5, Insightful)
The DNC and the Clintons were in deep with the Russians (the fake dossier paid for by HRC PAC and the DNC, from the Russians, the uranium One deal, the 500 thousand Bill Clinton got after the deal went through when HRC was Sec. of State)
That's "in deep" by your reckoning? What about in 2008 when Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, $50 million more than Trump paid for it a few years earlier? Couldn't be that Trump was helping launder money for the Russians, right? No, the house must have doubled in value in a few years, right? Never mind that it was the highest price paid for a Palm Beach house (by $13 million), that's just what the market could bear, right? Maybe the guy just really liked the property, even though he specifically said he didn't plan to live in the house or the US in general. No, he said it was an investment property, and if I know anything about real estate investments, I know that you should pay double what it's worth, and more than any other property in the area. I'm pretty sure that's how investment works. And this is a continuing pattern of Trump selling condos and other high-value real estate, a notorious target for money laundering, to a long list of shell companies. This is following Russia identifying Trump as exactly the kind of person they might want to groom as an oblivious foreign agent because of his easily manipulated personality, only to drop the effort after a decade or two because he's too unpredictable. Instead you want to try to drag up a payment made to Bill Clinton for $500k, and use that as evidence that they are "in deep" with the Russians. Where's the paper trail on that payment to Bill, by the way, which connects it to Russia?
Re:Re; Democrats are a known TRAITORS (Score:5, Insightful)
Something got fucked up in your post. I think you meant to link to "actual text messages from the FBI demonstrating malfeasance towards Republicans", but instead of you linked to some crap on Fox News.
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Like it or not, there are objective facts.
The Donald didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd ever, there are no 'alternative facts'.
How people can say they want to be able to choose 'truthiness' as if it is equally valid with what is true.
Be careful because there is such a thing as not having ALL the facts. Especially in political theater, the omission of objective facts and cherry picking the disclosed facts to support one's desired narrative is an art form. Misleading use of facts is common. Being objectively true isn't enough. You need "The Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth" to get the full picture.
BTW... Trump is often just boasting to watch folks scurry around making weird noises. I think he enjoys watching folks g
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I think that counter is wrong, you might want to check it... Should be around 2545 days at this point.. ;)
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